Take a look at Denmark, especially on the island of Sealand (away from Copenhagen) and on the Jutland peninsula. There are many places where you can literally stand one foot in the city and the other on a farm. And, yes, they seem to coexist quite comfortably.

Take a look at Denmark, especially on the island of Sealand (away from Copenhagen) and on the Jutland peninsula. There are many places where you can literally stand one foot in the city and the other on a farm. And, yes, they seem to coexist quite comfortably.

This sounds like standing at the Urban Growth Boundary in Portland.

I think a lot of problems begin to arise at the interface of these areas, especially when you have a mix of people who work the land and others that commute to a wage-based job. People moving from the city to the "country" are sometimes disillusioned by the realities of early morning tractors, livestock smells, dust and fertilizers. Add to that increasing financial pressures for struggling farms and you can see how the domino effect gets rolling. The beast that swallowed open space.

In the South Valley of Albuquerque, they are trying to establish a series of "village centers" that will cluster more dense development in specific hubs by transferring development rights from other open spaces. This is also dovetailed with a land trust model for those that are interested whereby a non-profit entity (like the Farmland Trust or similar) buys the development rights for agricultural land. The land owner gets an infusion of cash, but the property cannot be developed in the future (at least not outside of certain guidelines).

Its hard to say if this will result in the preservation of the semi-rural feel people want in this area as this plan has only recently been completed, but that's how they have tried it around here.